Hi Pear,
My mistake, I didn't take the figures off the announcement -was really thinking out loud. Was thinking that we could get a share of a joint venture ...and if it was to buy distressed gold producing assets in Australia (with further exploration /production potential), would need to be of the order of 10 Mill to be viable especially when processing facilities are considered (although they way gold is behaving they might give them away soon).
I take your point about keeping investors informed accurately ...I can remember wondering for ages what happened to the results of "Magpie" I guess that while we have not had much luck there is a reluctance to scare the market with the truth (perhaps there is an argument that no mineralisation is a continuation of the status quo) ...and the situation is only made worse with lower commodity prices.
As far as valuing the company, our on-paper valuation should probably be less than zero, given that we have no economically commercial mineral resource in the current market conditions. Our value to a large Chinese company (for example) may be our potential ability to discover an economic resource with our niche exploration capability in an geographical area where we have considerable in-house and proprietary geological data -not to mention know-how, relationships, built up knowledge including tacit knowledge.
This means that the real value in GBZ at this point will be it's intellectual property and unfortunately intellectual property is not recognised as an asset (intangible asset) under accounting rules. This even applies to codified IP such as patents, registered designs or copyright (with exceptions concerning whether the IP has been the subject of a transaction (bought or sold). This is all an ongoing cause of discussion between accounting and legal professions and is quite complex as part of the discussion in
this paper from the University of Wollongong.
In any case, it doesn't help GBZ and really means that it isn't logical to try to value the company using accounting rules.
Unfortunately, the best we can hope for is that an entity like the Chinese Co we are in discussions with to recognise the IP value that GBZ have built up as an exploration company, and be prepared to invest based on the possibility of future success.
It's logical that massive international company seeking minerals internationally can be more effective by using local exploration companies to reduce costs and maximise their chances of success -lets hope it works out for all parties.
Regarding the Mitsui / Cloncurry partnership, I think we were paid 11% of the budget for managing the exploration activities (that local knowledge thing again), and no doubt that has been used to pay GBZ management / operating expenses -but I don't have any dollar amounts and the exact numbers don't worry me. Thank out lucky stars we have had it I guess would not be a pretty picture otherwise.
GBZ will be all over for me when the options expire -unless we have a great find, but I have no one to blame but myself for my investment decisions. Fantastic (but expensive) education!
I wish us all the best of luck, GBZ management included ...and I think it is deserved after such a long and difficult and unrewarding campaign.
Cheers all,
SJB
